


The Trails We Track

by adastreia_writes



Series: Lionborn [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe- Fantasy, Ancient Religions, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blacksmith!Hunk, Experimentation on Humans, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Golems, Graphic Descriptions of Violence (probably), Knights - Freeform, Made-Up Altean History and Rituals, Magic, Marksman!Lance, Outlaw!Keith, Paladin Bond, Pentatheon, Scholar!Pidge, Shapeshifting, Slavery, Various Races, broganes, corrupt leadership, injuries, like only names from the new season are gonna be mentioned, made-up mythology, prisoners of war, the Lions are all females in this one, the Lions as Goddesses, tyranny, very very minor season 3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 21:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11814852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adastreia_writes/pseuds/adastreia_writes
Summary: When Takashi, son of the Shirogane Household and knight of the Garrison Royal Guard, went missing on a quest, everyone thought him dead. Everyone, that is, except his little brother, Keith. Losing his position as a knight in the Garrison Royal Guard in the process, he swore to find him and get him back, no matter what it took. He didn't expect that that would result in accidentally awakening an ancient lion goddess that's looking for her ‘paladin’ and striking a deal with her.But hey, when life gives you lemons…OR The fantasy AU in which Keith is looking for his brother, Blue is looking for her paladin, and they just might be able to help each other out.





	The Trails We Track

Keith’s day was already off to a bad start  _ before _ he met an eccentric lion goddess.

  Now, some people may enjoy starting their day with their body pressed on the cold hard floor with the weight of another on top of them- Keith did not. He grunted as his hair fell in his eyes, blocking his vision more than it already was. With a snarl on his lips, he kept squirming in manic, yet futile attempts to break his opponent’s grip on him. He could only do so much with his arms pinned to his back.

  The other guy looked like an angered ox; he was significantly bigger than Keith, and buff, muscles ripping and veins popping. He was bald, but his facial hair more than made up for it. His eyebrows were thick and bushy, his beard a frizzy, tangled brown mess that covered half his face and almost reached his chest (Keith might’ve also noticed some stray bread crumbs in there- he supposed it doubled as a napkin). His eyes were beady and black, and they burned with bloodthirst. Keith wasn’t sure what had possessed him when he had accepted this fight. Or when he had called the man a ‘sleazy drunkard he could take on any time’, evoking his rage. He made a mental note to refrain from insulting muscular, twelve-inches-taller-than-him men in the future.

“Still t’ink ye can take me?” the man whispered smugly in his ear with a heavy accent. The stench of his breath burned Keith’s nostrils, while the pressure on his chest made him, much to his embarrassment, wheeze with strain. Still, he offered no verbal response, too proud to admit his painfully obvious defeat. Reputations to keep.

  His silence seemed to ignite the other man’s need  to inflict pain since he unexpectedly clasped the back of his head and slammed it sharply on the floor with such force that for a moment, he saw black. His cranium exploded with pain and the  _ BAM!  _ the bone made when it hit the floor echoed in his ears. Blood trickled down his forehead. The wound started stinging and he tried to blink away the dizziness. His limited view of the muddy boots belonging to the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight kept wavering. Said crowd suddenly erupted in a hushed murmur while he was still grasping for his surroundings. He saw a pair of boots step up from the mass behind the others.

“Borion. Let the kid go.”

  Whoever had spoken had a smooth, yet authoritative voice. It reeked with power and elegance, however, it was its familiarity that sent chills down Keith’s spine and made the hair on his neck stand. 

“Bu-But he-” he heard the guy -Borion- stutter out a complaint only to be cut off abruptly. 

“He lost the fight. The ones who bet on him paid up.  _ Let him go. _ ” 

  There was a pause. Keith felt Borion loosening his grip ever so slightly, his movements hesitant, until he finally released him. He hastily got to his knees, acted as if he didn’t stumble and blowed his bangs away from his face. They still clung to his forehead with sweat and blood, but at least now he could see the crowd around him starting to disassemble at the end of the last fight, their last source of entertainment. He rubbed his wrists as he glared at Borion, who wholeheartedly returned the gesture, even accompanying it with a couple of not-so-flattering gesticulations before he disappeared in the sea of people leaving. 

  Soon, the entire tavern was empty, save for one person: a lean, tall man cloaked in black robes and a dark grey hood. One could easily think he was just another peasant that had come to watch and bet on the fighters, had it not been for his clean, shaven face, the delicate lace around his collar, not completely covered but the collar of his cheap, long and worn out hood that he wore to hide the robes underneath, no doubt made with the finest of silks from the East and decorated with fancy embroidery, if the little piece of cloth that escaped the grasp of the concealing cloak near his boots. They were little nothings lost to the eyes of the unperceptive that gave his social position away. His eyes were fond, framed by wrinkles. He still sported an amused smile that Keith didn’t mirror.

“You’re welcome,” he said smugly.

Keith’s nostrils flared. “I was fine!” he barked. That earned a snort from the other man. 

“I see you have not let your rebellious streak wither, eh Keith?” he said, taking a few steps towards him. At the sound of his name, Keith tensed and looked around in alarm. Thankfully, even the barwoman had left. No one was around to hear.

“Ah, I apologise. You go by Tristan now, correct?” he said in a faux-apologetic tone. Now on his feet, Keith scowled at him.

“And what of it, Lord Elyar?” he asked venomously. He was aiming to appear intimidating, but he doubted it seemed so to the lord. He probably looked more like a cornered  _ and  _ wounded animal. His head injury stung in affirmation. 

  Elyar shrugged, unfazed. “I simply find it smart, what with that bounty on your head and all. Though I find your… occupation of choice to be rather attention-drawing.” 

  He motioned around him; the inside of a tavern, tables and chairs lying in wooden ruins, metal cups forgotten on the floor, the liquids they contained spilled all over the floor, the walls and the little surviving furniture. The air reeked of sweat and vomit, remnants of the numerous fights that had taken place there during the previous hours and evidence of just how much the viewers enjoyed their stay. All in all, it was a mess. A smelly, filthy mess. Keith couldn’t find it in himself to argue with the look Elyar was giving him, as if saying ‘ _ Really? _ ’.

“This is no place fit for a son of the Shirogane Household.” he concluded his point. Keith had to suppress his urge to laugh bitterly. It had been very long since the last time someone had called him by that title, and it brought back memories anything but pleasant. As if the mere presence of the lord wasn't enough for one day.

“No,” he said coldly, “it is not. But I suppose organizing these…  _ feasts  _ is fit for the head of the Aeger Household?”

   Elyar’s expression soured. His gentle face twisted into a scowl and his eyes turned icy.

“I’ve known you since you were a little child, Keith. I know you and your good nature, which is the only reason other than your father that I didn't report you the moment you showed up in my fights six months ago. But  _ do not _ insult my name. You have no right to. Not after what  _ you  _ did.” he said. 

  His voice remained even, but it was now void of all the amount of fondness it had held moments ago. Calm, yet dangerous, like the ocean before a storm. Anger sparked in Keith’s sternum. He knew all too well what his actions had entailed when he did them, and he needed no reminders, especially ones coming from ghosts of his past. 

“I know that.” he said through gritted teeth, a suffocating feeling spreading through his chest as he struggled to tame his emotions.

  Tense silence hung in the air, but then Elyar regained his posture. The scowl melted into a neutral expression, his lips and wrinkles smoothing out. The familiarity didn’t return in his eyes, but they didn’t hold their frosty rage anymore. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Keith wasn’t sure what to do. His skin crawled and his entire body pulsed with the need to run, run,  _ run _ . Elyar’s presence was unsettling, irking, painful, all because of the memories he carried with him, and the longer he stood there, as tranquil as he had been back when he would tell a young Keith and Shiro tales of his experiences, memories and guilt began catching up with him, making every instinct he had scream at him to get away. 

“You can stop looking so stiff,” Elyar finally broke the silence, “You have bigger problems than me. I came to warn you. Two bounty hunters came to the city today, and they’re on your trail. You need to leave, get even further away from the capital. You're no longer safe here.” 

  Keith’s eyes widened, and his stomach dropped. If bounty hunters had already picked up on his tracks, he didn't have long. He had to leave. 

  With ground teeth, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  _ Patience yields focus. _ He exhaled and opened his eyes. He cast one last glance at Elyar and with a curt nod of acknowledgment, he made his way towards the door. He barely got to see Elyar do the same before he was out of the tavern. 

  
  


~*~*~*~

  
  


  So apparently when Lord Elyar said the bounty hunters were on his trail, he had probably been downplaying the fact that he had meant to say  _ ‘You barely have thirty minutes before they find you, get the  _ hell _ out of here!”  _ Unfortunately, that became apparent a bit too late. ‘A bit too late’ as 

in when he’d spotted one of two said bounty hunters.  __

  The feeling of dread started to settle in when he’d been passing the market. In the midst of the non-stop conversations of the crowd, the constant shouting and bargaining of the salesmen, the tents and stands full of precious merchandise and the exotic odors that attacked his nose, Keith had been hurriedly pushing his way through the sea of people when he felt it. A pair of eyes following his every movement. At first he passed it off as paranoia, but it didn't go away, instead becoming more intense than before. With frustration and a few colorful curses under the breath, he begrudgingly admitted to himself that he was probably being stalked, at which point he began to search for his stalker in the crowd. He tried not to make it too obvious that he was searching for predatory eyes stalking him like prey, and looked around him, trying to move slower but not to be swayed away by the waves of people. He was met with hundreds of passing faces and he struggled to pinpoint the one that had eyes on him, but then he spotted her.

  Across from him, leaning casually on a pole that supported yet another tent, was a girl. She had the slithering and dangerous demeanor of a snake, slender with an hourglass figure, her hip popping out as she put all her weight on one leg. Her blonde hair was styled in two long pigtails that covered her chest. She seemed beautiful at first glance, but then the details of her face registered, and all admiration turned to horror. What probably once had been a fair face, was now obscured by countless scars, some lighter, some darker than her already pale skin. Two of them stood out, bigger than the others; one vertical from the cheekbone to the left of her lips, and one darker, fresher that all the rest, that went sideways from her right temple and across her brow and eye, and stopped near her nostril. All that paired with the amount of weapons strapped all over her body- knives, daggers, swords, a garrote- and Keith was sure she was a bounty hunter. Most likely after him. He gulped. 

  Maybe he  _ was  _ paranoid. She could be anyone. The city market was full of travelers, and many carried weapons, some more than others. Keith did too, never parting with his knife. Granted, he wasn’t a full-on walking arsenal, but then again, he wasn’t covered in scars either. Who knew what she had come face to face with. The fleeting image of desperate victims trying to fight their way away from her crossed his mind. He stubbornly elected to suppress it. Besides, even if she  _ was  _ a bounty hunter -which Keith was still aggressively denying- it wouldn’t be that far from the ordinary. Bounty hunters often stopped in marketplaces like this to resupply, maybe update their murderous collection of bladed weapons, and then be on their way to inflict pain and get their money. Yeah. Nothing to worry about. 

  Instead of lingering further in the middle of the street and drawing more attention to himself, he tore his gaze from the not-bounty-hunter and continued on his way. The feeling of being stalked didn’t go away, nagging the back of his mind, no matter how much distance he put between himself and that girl. He kept thinking he saw a flash of blonde, a glint of iron. Uneasiness was impossible to shake off. It gave him all the more reason to get back to his shack faster, which was something easier said than done.

  You see, getting out of the market and then out of the city was easy enough, but it was what followed that made Keith’s situation difficult. Two miles from the city, the landscape changed. From the moist air, the slippery mud and the unevenly contributed green, the terrain turned brick red and dry with cracks. The wide plains gave way to rough mountains, deep caves and thin sand. By day, the heat made the air ripple, and by night, the cold bit into one’s flesh. Water was scarce.The desert lied there, unwelcoming and harsh. No man in his right mind would enter it on his own free will. Of course, Keith was one of the few reckless idiots that did so anyway. In fact, he didn’t only enter it. He lived there as well. 

  He’d known that his choice to make a home out of that abandoned shack he’d found while stumbling away from the capital was risky. But it was because it was risky that it was also strategical. No one would think to look in the middle of the desert for him, and he could collect all the information on his brother’s disappearance undisturbed. He had hoped that this little hideout of his would’ve lasted more than the ten months he’d spent occupying it, but now he had no choice but to leave it behind and look for a new one. He could probably stay in one of the caves for a couple of nights to get supplies first before leaving.

  The moment he stepped foot in the shack, he allowed himself to breathe and slump against the door. He was still on edge, but the feeling of being 

watched had finally subdued, and the familiar paper-covered walls that engulfed him soothed him, even just a little. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and sighed. He wished Shiro was here. If his older brother was with him, none of this would have happened. No losing his Garrison title, no hurting his family, no bounty and no bounty hunters.  _ No having to look for him in the first place.  _

  He felt a lump forming in his throat already. Before he could start to choke on it, he took a shaky breath.

_ Patience yields focus, patience yields focus, patience yields focus. _

  Keith repeated what he thought to be Shiro’s greatest advice to him until he was calm enough to resume his last minute moving. He managed to dig up a leather bag, and he started packing. He didn’t have many belongings other than all his findings and clues on Shiro, which were neatly folded and put in a leather bound journal, his treasured knife that always stayed on his hip, and a Shirogane emblem. Shiro had had it made for him, as a present for his last birthday, only a few months before he’d gone on the Kerberos quest that he never came back from. It was made of steel and coated with silver, just about the size of his palm. It was a round, thick band with swirling patterns on it and two knight’s swords crossed over it. On its backside, his initials were carved:  _ K. S.  _

__

  It was meant to serve as proof. Proof that even when they did not share the same blood, he was part of the Shirogane family, and above all, Shiro’s brother. It was the last thing he had left of him, and though he wasn't that sure he deserved it anymore, he couldn’t bear to part with it. It gave him a feeling of comfort that nothing else could. It kept him going. 

  Not long later, he was well on his way. He was going further into the desert, the heat making his skin feel as if it was slowly melting. He was sweating like a pig and he was starting to re-evaluate his genius decision to be dressed in all black. Well, with the exception of his red shirt, but that didn't really make anything better. His bag felt heavy on his shoulders, even if it barely contained some essentials and his notes.The sun was a particularly high level of scorching that day, because that was just how good Keith’s luck was. He climbed over a ridge and he jogged through a flat plain, ignoring the way his feet burned, the way his arms trembled and the way his entire body ached. He had to cover as much distance as he could before the night fell. He had to get to the caves if he wanted to have some sort of cover from the cold. 

  He was passing through a ravine when the hair on his nape stood with sudden awareness. His eyes widened. He stilled. 

“No way,” he muttered in disbelief, stopping abruptly in his tracks. 

  He spinned around himself, looking at his surroundings with newfound alarm, the metallic items in his bag clanging together.

  No one was around. Or at least so it seemed. The walls of the ravine stood high, reaching the pale blue sky, cracks and ledges bathing in the dying light of the falling sun. Silence ruled over everything, from the rocks to Keith himself. For a moment, it even felt tranquil. And then an arrow landed right between his feet. 

  Keith let out a yelp of surprise as he staggered backward, frantically trying to locate where it had come from. He didn't get a chance to, as an arm wrapped around his neck in a chokehold, just loose enough to only  _ partially  _ crush his windpipe. He also got a complimentary dagger tip poking threateningly his side. With the wind knocked right out of him, his hands instinctively flew over his ambusher’s in a futile attempt to get it off him. They only pushed the dagger deeper in warning.

“Well, well,” a distinctly female voice purred in his ear, “If it isn’t the disowned Shirogane son. Planning to commit treason again?”

  Keith snarled and thrashed a little. He only evoked a bark of amused laughter from the woman as she tightened her grip ever so slightly, actually starting to cut off his air this time. She was taunting him, he realized, playing with him like a cat plays with a mouse before it strikes. Fueled by irritation and adrenaline, he forcefully brought down the heel of his boot on her foot and elbowed her side as hard as he could, making her draw back somewhat with a groan. She didn’t fully release him, but her hold on him weakened enough for him to break it and twist away from her, hastily drawing his own dagger from it sheath, ready for a fight. He inhaled sharply when he actually got a good look at his ambusher; the girl from the market. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. He should have listened to his gut. 

  The girl had already recovered, but seemed to be in no hurry to get him back in her hold. Instead, she seemed completely relaxed, crossing her arms over her chest (dagger still in hand, mind you) and looking at him smugly, with a smirk and an odd glint in her eyes. 

“Who are you?” Keith demanded. 

 Perhaps it would have been smarter if he had run. Perhaps he should have tried to knock her out and then hide out until she came around again and left. But he figured that if she had managed to stalk him all the way from the market, there was no point in any of those options. She was obviously a good tracker. Besides, there was still the unresolved problem of  _ where the fuck had that goddamn arrow come from? _

“Name’s Nyma. Normally I’d say ‘at your service’, but unfortunately for you, I’m anything but that.” said Nyma and performed a fake courtesy. A ray of the sun reflected in the hilt of the sword on her back. Keith took the few seconds that gave him to scan the walls of the ravine for any signs of another person. 

“You can't see him from here.” Nyma’s voice rang out. He snapped his attention back at her. She now had rope in her hand. With narrowed eyes he took a few small steps back, raising his dagger higher in defense, parallel to his chest. 

“What?” he hissed. 

“Rolo. My marksman. You can't see him from here. But I assure you,  _ he  _ can see  _ you _ ,” she replied, moving in towards him. She raised the rope higher, showing it to him. “Look, kid, you can't get away. Rolo and I won't get paid any less if we bring you back with a limb too little, so we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You choose.” She jiggled the rope for emphasis. She said it with such boredom that he figured she must have said these words so many times to her bounties that it had become routine.

  It is in situations like this that one is presented with a fight-or-flight decision. Keith, being undeniably  _ Keith _ , chose fight. 

  He let out a cry of rage and charged at Nyma. He sliced at her, but she easily dodged it, stepping to the side in unmatched grace. He swung his weapon at her once more, but she stepped aside again, grabbed his forearm, keeping him in place. Then, she slammed her fist on his knuckles, making him drop his dagger with a grunt. Quick on her feet, she kicked it away from them, rendering him unarmed. He cursed, and she winked at him cheekily. He let out a frustrated noise and tugged his arm free. He threw a punch at her jaw, and actually managed to hit her this time. She stumbled back but it took little time to regain her defensive stance. She narrowed her eyes at him before attacking with her dagger in a strong hammer’s grip. She moved slightly slower than him, her weapons heavier than his bag, and Keith dodged the first few swings, moving backward, before stepping to the side, getting low and sweeping her off her feet. With a short yelp, she fell on her back, her own knife escaping her hand. With haste, he snatched it from the ground and put it in his now empty sheath. It didn't quite fit but it would do for the time being. Sparing her one last glance, he picked up his own dagger and took off sprinting towards the end of the ravine, where the caves began. 

  He was panting, his heart was racing, and he could he hear Nyma cursing and running after him, but he didn't stop,  _ couldn't  _ stop. It was so close he almost didn't care about the pain that came from his feet and his worn out arms. But then, just a few feet away before he reached it, the ground shook with a deafening  _ BOOM!  _ and he barely got to gasp before the world went spinning around him as he was suddenly flung through the air. He landed about ten feet away with a sickening  _ crack  _ coming from his left shoulder. He cried out in pain. He felt like lava had started dripping down his shoulder and brought a tentative hand over it, not daring to put any pressure on it. He must have dislocated it.

“Son of a bitch,” he croaked out between groans. He inhaled sharply as he rolled over and used his good arm to put his weight on so he could get up. Just as he did, Nyma arrived, panting. Her deformed face was no longer calm, but instead twisted with anger, her scars curling along with her mouth in a scowl. 

“I told you you can't get away, kid,” she huffed and raised her hand, showing him a small pouch. He looked at it confused, head still spinning. He felt slightly lightheaded, and he suddenly realized that there was more blood slowly running down his temple. His wound from the fight must have had reopened, or gotten bigger. 

Seeing his confused, unfocused gaze, Nyma said: “Black powder.”

_ Black powder,  _ Keith thought in exasperation,  _ Of all the things they could have, it had to be freaking black powder.  _

“Kid. I know who you are,” she said, “I know what you did.” He gulped. He didn’t want to hear this. 

“Stop,” he said through gritted teeth, both from pain and restraining himself from acting out. Nyma ignored him and went on. 

“You abused your family’s name. You betrayed their trust. You committed treason. You went beyond all and any acceptable limit,” she listed. 

  Keith clenched his jaw, his rage unexpressed, yet still rippling off of him. Her eyes sparkled at that, but her eyebrows shot up quizzically, like she’d finally found the one little weakness in her opponent’s armor that would get her her victory, just the weakness she had expected to find.

“Huh,” she chuckled, “You don’t like hearing about your crimes?” 

  She talked as if this was a casual conversation. As if there hadn’t just been a black powder explosion. As if she hadn’t tracked him all the way from back at the city. As if Keith wasn’t hostile. She was so eerily calm, and he wasn’t having it. Instead of answering her probably rhetorical question, he looked her dead in the eye and spit on the ground, never breaking eye contact. She raised an eyebrow at that and shook her head. 

“Spit all you like, kid. Doesn’t change what you did, and certainly doesn’t change the fact that you have nowhere left to go. Run’s over.” He glanced behind him.  _ So close.  _

  He turned back to her, clutching his arm by the elbow. “No, it's not.”

  He took off. 

  He ran like his life depended on it (which, granted, it kind of did). He wanted to scream in anguish every time his injured shoulder so much as moved the wrong way, sending waves of raw agony to the rest of his arm. Still, he pushed through it and ran. He was at the end of the ravine now, he only had to go a little further to get to the first cave entrance and he was so close. He could make it, he could lure Nyma inside the cave and he could fight her there without having to worry about her marksman and black powder pouches. At least, he thought he could do all that, until, out of nowhere, with only the almost inaudible  _ swish  _ of the arrow to warn him, another explosion shook the ravine, dangerously close to him. Once again, he found himself flying through the air and landing on the hard soil. Only this time, he felt it immediately retreat from beneath him and he belatedly realized that he was falling as he tumbled down a rocky declivity, putting his body through a blazing inferno of pain before he ended up back on the ground again.

  His arm exploded in anguish. His breath hitched, his ears were ringing and his head felt like it was being compressed between the ground and the invisible boot of a giant. The cut on his temple from earlier had gotten deeper and the thick blood that dripped down his face only worsened his disoriented state. Groaning, he tried to focus, but all he could see was the reddish shades of the ground and the rich blue of the sky melted together, swirling sluggishly like muddy swamp water. He could hear Nyma’s voice getting closer as she loudly let loose a string of curses and he desperately tried to shake off the dizziness. He attempted to get back up but the moment he got on his feet, a wave of nausea hit him and gravity pulled him violently back on the topsoil. He clutched his head with his uninjured arm and gritted his teeth. The blow had put a good distance between him and the bounty hunter and his fall would make her climb down the rocks of the declivity, but he was sure she was quickly gaining ground. He had to move. 

   A few feet away from him, Keith could make out the low arch of a cave entrance. He couldn’t recall ever coming across it before, though it might have been because of the concussion he was pretty sure he had acquired during his graceless fall. It didn’t matter. The sole fact that it was there was the piece of good luck he received that day. With barely reliable vision and weakened muscles, he started crawling in its direction.

“Shirogane!” he heard someone shout. Oh yeah. Nyma. He didn’t stop to spare her a glance- he wouldn’t have been able to spot her in his lightheadedness anyway. 

“Stop right where you are!” he heard her roar. He didn’t stop.

  He kept moving forwards, putting one arm in front of the other and pushing his body towards the cave, slowly growing used to the pain coming from his injured arm. He winced and he groaned and he grunted and he kept going until finally- he was there. He was in the cave. He looked up at the walls surrounding him; it was already darker in the cave than outside, and the cool air around him felt incredible against his feverishly hot skin. In the distance, he could still make out Nyma swearing and shouting-probably at her marksman, who Keith still had no idea how he could shoot his arrows so precisely at such a big distance. Frankly, he didn’t care. He was exhausted. He just wanted to lie there and sleep it all off. Yes, sleep sounded pretty nice. He could just close his eyes for a little while and rest.

  From far away, as if muffled by water, he heard shouts of anger and panic. Then, another explosion, too close for comfort. And after that, the last thing he became aware of before the darkness overtook him was the crash of stone shattering against stone and the earth rumbling. 

~*~*~*~

  Admittedly, Keith had woken up to dismaying situations in the past. Ever since he’d lost his position on the Garrison Royal Guard and the bounty had been placed on his head, the amount of times he’d had a rude awakening just kept rising. He’d woken up to a scary guy holding a knife to his throat, to an angry source of his banging his fists on his door demanding payment, to being kicked out of a house by literally being thrown out of it. One would think that by now, he’d be quite the expert at handling this kind of a situation. In all honesty, he thought so too. But nothing,  _ nothing _ , could have prepared him for  _ this _ wake-up call. 

  Being injured was one thing. Being injured  _ and  _ trapped in a cave was a whole other story. 

  The pain was what first registered. It was everywhere, tugging at his entire body, pulling every inch of his flesh. It felt more like waking up sore after a full day of exercise when you’ve had none for months rather than having recently been blown up a couple of times.

_   Well,  _ he thought,  _ that could have gone a lot worse. _

  
  He spoke too soon. He realized that when he made to sit up and the soft yet ignorable tugging turned to a thousand very much _not_ ignorable stabs. He let out a yelp accompanied with a jolt, which only made the pain worse, making him wince. He hissed when he carefully applied some pressure to his dislocated shoulder. 

  “Oh, that’s not good,” he croaked out with a groan while evaluating (albeit very amateurishly) his injury. He gave up after a few seconds and let his good arm drop. Fortunately, he was near the wall of the cave, so leaning on it, he managed to stand up. It was then when he looked around him and noticed his situation. In front of him was a huge pile of humongous rocks, blocking what once had been the entrance to the cave, only allowing a few rays of moonlight to shine through some tiny holes. He let out a string of curses, trying to ignore his growing panic. He was trapped in a cave. An unfamiliar one at that. He didn’t know where he could find an exit, or if there even was one. He could run out of air to breathe soon. Even if he did find a way out, he probably had some annoyingly resourceful bounty hunters still lurking for him. Too many variables, too many possibilities, too many ways for all this to go  _ wrong _ . 

  His breathing was labored, coming out in nervous puffs the more his mind raced. He closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep breath, gulping. 

 

_ There has to be a way to get out of this.  _

 

  There had to be. And he was going to find it. After taking that moment to recollect himself, he breathed out and begun to take a better look at the walls of the cave. The closer he looked, the more he thought he saw some weird patterns on them. The first time he noticed one- an indistinguishable geometric shape, darker than the rough rock it was on- he shrugged it off as his eyes playing tricks on him. The second one, he thought it was a weird shadow from the barely-there moonlight. But the third one didn't leave him much room for excuses. Just a few feet further into the cave, on the very same wall that he was leaning on, he could make out the same geometric shapes he'd been noticing all over the rest of the cave. The difference in that one was that it was much bigger and so distinct that he couldn't possibly deny its existence. 

“What the hell…” he muttered as he got closer to it, his eyes widening more and more with each step. 

  He brushed his hand across the lowest line. It was carved deep into the stone, rough to the touch, and touching it gave Keith a strange sense of awe. Taking a few steps back, he took in the entire thing; it was the side of a proud lionhead composed of polygons. Looking back at the other shapes around the walls, he could suddenly make out similar illustrations; the whole body of a lion, caught in the middle of several scenarios, attacking, overlooking, sitting proudly above what he could only guess were humans.

  He recalled his education back under the wing of the Shiroganes. There was one time in history class when their teacher had brought them original illustrations he had acquired in one of his travels to the far East that depicted shapes similar to the ones he was seeing now; geometric, hard, full of edges. Glyphs, he’d called them. Now, while Shiro had been overjoyed to be able to study them, Keith had never been a history enthusiast (all these things belonged to the past for a reason) and he’d barely spared the illustrations ten minutes, but he could still remember the glyphs and what the teacher had said about them that day: they had been a way for an ancient civilization to record their history, their culture, and their customs. If the markings he was seeing now were anything similar to that, he was slightly scared to know what sort of history  _ this  _ civilization had left behind. 

  Regardless, he had no choice but to keep going deeper in the cave if he hoped to find a way out, so he did. He didn’t get too far though, because only a few steps further in, he heard a series of cracks coming from beneath him and looked down to see to his horror that  _ the goddamn ground was breaking _ . He couldn’t get a single yelp out before the air was knocked out of his lungs as he fell.  _ Again _ . 

  The problem with this fall is that it was  _ way  _ worse than the last one. Why, you ask? Because there was  _ no freaking land underneath him to land on.  _ He free-falled, and though he would very much like to say that his life passed before his eyes, that he thought of his poor brother that he had yet to find, that he thought of his family that he still had to make amends with, all he could really think was his impressively big vocabulary of cuss words mixed with shrieking. Though thinking back to it, his throat hurt, so he was probably actually shrieking. 

  Arms flailing, hair and clothes whipping in the air and vocal chords at their full capacity, Keith really thought he was going to die, just like that. So unceremoniously. 

 

_ Keith Shirogane, died of becoming one with the floor of a god-forsaken cave _ , the tombstone would read. If there ever was one.

 

  And just as Keith was starting to accept his untimely death, among the blur of rocks that made everything indistinguishable, he got a glimpse of blue from below him. 

 

_ Water?  _ The thought pierced through the fog of his panicked mind. He saw that little speck of blue again. Water! He rejoiced. There was still a slight hope, if he landed in water then he still might survive, it was just w-  _ oh wait. _

__

“Shit, shit, shit!” he started repeating in the highest pitched voice he’d ever used as he desperately tried to put his body in a vertical angle. Water was good, yes, but not if he landed wrong. If he landed wrong, it could very well be ten times worse than becoming a human pancake upon contact with the ground. 

His last thought was the one of his brother. 

__

_   I’m sorry, Shiro.  _

  And then his body hit the water. Multiple things happened at once. The fall that he felt had lasted hours (it was a few mere seconds) finally came to its end as ice cold water surrounded him. His feet erupted in pain and his entire body felt like it was being pricked by a thousand needles. But most importantly, he realized something vital: he wasn’t dead. The fact hit him so hard that when he resurfaced, he started laughing hysterically, and he kept laughing until his body was heaving so hard that he could barely catch a breath. He got out of the body of water (was it a lake? A pond? He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t really care for that matter) and lied on his back, gulping in as much air as he could. He was alive… He was alive! It didn’t even matter to him that he barely felt his body anymore, both from the cold and the injuries. 

  He looked back up from where he had fallen. It was pretty high, but not as high as it had felt. It looked like a weird waterfall sprouted from the walls a few feet away from where the hole he’d fallen through was, but he couldn’t be too sure. There was some light (surprisingly) but it was still quite dark to make out any details. The source of the light was behind him. He wasn’t sure what it was, so he sat up and turned to take a look. He certainly wasn’t expecting to come face to face with what he did.

“Whoa…” he gasped as his eyes got wider.

  About thirty feet from him, illuminated by some sort of light coming from a hole above it, a colossal statue towered over him. It was carved in the shape of a lion sitting on its hind legs, standing proud, as if overwatching its pride. Made out of three-dimensional geometric shapes, it looked like the lion he kept seeing in the carvings on the walls, and it bore the same otherworldly aura. The stone was littered with cracks and pieces had obviously broken off, lying in crumbles around its feet, yet it retained a great sense of majesty. Its front paws (more like claws if what Keith was seeing was right) were submerged into the water of the pond for the most part, but between them, there was what looked like a round table with something on it, though he couldn’t tell what. Looking around him, he realized that he was on a step that led towards said table, only a few inches into the water. Then he observed the rest of the walls, on which he noticed more carvings like the ones he’d seen earlier. The entire place left Keith in awed silence. And then he found himself getting up and walking towards the statue.

  It was like the statue was radiating some sort of… energy. He couldn’t describe it differently. It seemed like there was a presence in that underground room that pulled him in, singing a powerful siren song in his ears to lure him towards the stone giant. 

  With his feet still wobbly from his fall and the wet clothes weighing him down, he got closer with effort, and as he did, he realized that the something he'd noticed on the round stone table was actually a statuette; a mini version of the overwatching stone lioness, ever as proud. When he got close enough, he noticed all the little details that decorated it. It was crafted more carefully than its bigger version, and it seemed better preserved as well. Where the statue had cracks, the statuette had smooth stone, merely covered in a thick layer of dust. No chunks were missing, and it was only somewhat chipped on some of the edges. On top of that, in areas that the statue was plain, devoid of any design, the statuette was consumed with patterns. They were different from the ones on the walls (and on the floor, as he came to notice). While those had been made of straight lines, steady and in place, the ones he was seeing now were swirling, dancing around the gray stone vividly. They twirled around its curves, journeying from the spine to the belly, making it look much more delicate than the roughness the statue emitted. It was absolutely capturing, the way the lines seemed to pulse with energy, with  _ life _ . Actually, it almost looked like it pulsed with… color? Blue? Yes, a very faint, almost indistinguishable pale blue that could pass as a trick of the weird light illuminating the entire room (the source of which he still couldn’t determine, annoyingly enough. Was it moonlight? Was it sunlight? Starlight? Who knew. Keith definitely couldn’t tell). Perhaps it  _ was _ a trick of the light. In all honestly, he was starting to think that he had hit his head far too hard and far too many times that day for his vision to be reliable at that point. Which was why he stretched out his arm and gingerly picked up the statuette. That promptly turned out to be a mistake.

 

  So many things happened at the same time that he almost didn’t register half of them. The eyes of both the statue and the statuette gleamed a bright golden light and the glyphs around the cave walls shone in the most blinding icy blue. Under his feet, what he had thought to be various glyphs scattered around the floor shone too, revealing it to actually be one huge, circular glyph made out of circles and polygons that stretched all around the statue. The earth roared; in fact, Keith thought he heard an actual roar echoing around him, deep and guttural, shaking him to his core. Dust started falling from above and he heard the water from the little pond he’d fallen into earlier slosh around. He briefly entertained the mental image of a giant boulder coming down on him with the underground room collapsing all around him. 

 

  His head kept shooting from one direction to another as he took in everything wide-eyed, breath hitched in his throat. He didn’t know where to focus and he felt lightheaded from his attempt to take everything in at once.Then, the statuette started buzzing in his hand, earning a shocked gasp. He even stepped back and extended his arm away from him as the swirls on it started to glow in a deeper, ocean blue color and it kept buzzing until it was vibrating violently, and now white smoke was coming from the lion’s snout and it hurt to look at it and it hurt to hold it and it was too much and- Keith dropped it. 

 

  The statuette fell to the ground and shattered into a million pieces. The exact moment it did, white light erupted from it, light so strong that it made Keith’s eyes burn and desperately water again, and as if that wasn’t enough, an intense gust of wind came with it. For the millionth time that day, Keith fell on his butt. 

  The fall hadn’t been hard, but it still made his body go haywire with pain again. It all started to ache all over, now adding his poor eyes to the list of body parts in pain. He felt like he had just taken a long look at the sun itself, and he couldn’t stop himself from letting out a pathetic whimper. He had  _ not  _ signed up for all this. Whatever  _ this  _ was. Bounty hunters, black powder explosions, glowing caves, mystical statues and statuettes… He was starting to suspect this was one crazy dream generated by spoilt they probably had fed him back at the tavern. 

 

  But the surprises didn’t end there. Oh no. No, because, lo and behold, when he finally managed to open his eyes again, the first thing he saw in front of him was a sleeping blue lion. Yes, a lion. That was  _ fucking blue.  _ He couldn’t help it. He let out a deranged chuckle. That was it. He was crazy.  _ Batshit _ crazy.  _ Absolutely insane _ . There was no other explanation for what he was seeing. None. Because lions don’t just sprout out of nowhere, especially not in mystic underground cave rooms, and they’re  _ not fucking blue in the first goddamn place. _

 

  Yet still, there it was was, in all its might, a blue lion, with its claws and fur and everything. It lacked a mane, Keith noted. So it was a lion _ ess.  _ Just when he was starting to accept his newfound insanity and got closer to the sleeping beast though,  _ the fucker gave the deepest sigh he’s ever heard an animal give  _ and it… startled him (really it scared the shit out of him because he was becoming increasingly aware of his frail human nature and who says that just because it’s  _ blue _ it won’t have cravings for human flesh, huh?). Then the most surprising thing he’d witnessed all day happened. 

 

  As the lioness opened its eyes lazily and began to rise, its fur and claws and snout and tail, it all melted away and gave way to something else; a human body. A woman, to be exact. And an armed one at that. She was wearing a mixture of an odd looking dress and armor. Her chest was covered by a sky blue breastplate, worn over what he guessed was a dress made out of various layers of strips of different shades of blue. Some of the said strips from the outer layers of the dress were wrapped around her arms and over the silver gauntlets she had on her forearms. Her hair, a rich deep brown, were loose around her head, reaching her shoulder blades in pretty curls. It was unruly, but it managed to frame her face beautifully. Her facial features themselves were soft and gentle, welcoming. She was, for lack of a better word, ethereal. And Keith was dumbfounded. So much that at that point all he could do was gape.

 

  She was blinking hazily as if she had just woken up from an eternal slumber. She wasn’t all there, that much he could tell. And then she fell forward.

 

“What the hell!” yelped Keith at the suddenness of her fall as he rushed to cushion her. Once again, that was a poor choice on his part. She fell on him and he groaned in all sorts of discomfort. Thankfully her weight didn’t stay on him for long. In a matter of seconds, she was moving away from him with sharp movements, and shortly after, before he could register what had just happened, he had hands around his neck and he was being pressed on the ground. He winced and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he came face to face with tan skin and intense, slitted liquid gold eyes.

 

“You’re not my paladin.” she stated. 

 

“ _ What? _ ” 

 

“You are not my paladin,” she repeated. She tilted her head and her eyes danced around his face, examining him. Then she looked up, away from him, and let him go. She got off of him and started walking around. Keith sat up with strain just as she stopped and picked up a broken piece of the statuette; the lionhead. She looked at it as if in a haze. Then she snapped her head towards him again and looked at him with the same intensity she had been looking at him when she had had him pinned down, the lionhead still in hand. 

 

“You are not my paladin, yet I am out. Only Blaytz should be able to do that. How could you get me out?” she demanded, approaching him slowly. Her eyes were squinted in suspicion. 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Keith asked, his voice high pitched in disbelief. The incredulity of the situation barely allowed him to linger on the name she mentioned. He got up and pointed at her.

“Who the hell are  _ you?  _ You were a  _ goddamn blue lion _ , what the  _ fuck? _ ” he damn near screeched. She stopped moving towards him and raised an eyebrow, but that was as far as her reaction went. She straightened her back proudly.

 

“The mortals used to have many names for me. The most common one was Blue. Now,  _ boy _ , who, pray tell, are you? Because you certainly are not my paladin.” she said again. 

“ _ Mortals?  _ What the hell?” Keith knew he was sounding borderline hysteric. His voice had reached pitches he didn’t know he could reach. His hands were slightly trembling. He had reached his limits, honestly, he thought he could feel his left eye twitching. On top of it all, the woman, Blue, he guessed he should call her, looked at him like was a complete idiot. 

 

“Yes? I  _ am  _ a goddess after all.”

 

“Huh,” breathed Keith, clutching his head, “Of course. A goddess.” 

 

  The supposed goddess looked at him with a tilted head again, narrowing her eyes in confusion. 

 

“You’re strange. Have you never heard of the Altean Pentatheon?” she asked. 

 

_ Altean?  _

 

  Keith had heard the name before, but it wasn’t around the market, per se. 

 

“The Paladin Ceremonies?” she continued in his silence. 

 

  Yes, Keith knew the story of Altea. Everyone in Vetera Terra did. But that was all it was; a story. A story about a prosperous and harmonious kingdom and its doom at the hands of the Galra. He’d always thought that it was something the Galra had come up with and spread from the beginning of their empire to keep potential enemies and all subjects at bay, for who would ever attack or rise against the forces that wiped out an entire civilization? But here was a supposed goddess of said civilization standing right infront of him, expecting him to answer.

 

“Listen, Blue,” he drew out her name a bit, testing the sound of it, “I don’t know what is going on or what you’re talking about, but Altea… Altea is a myth.”

 

  He expected anguish, grief, maybe, because Blue seemed really set on her idea that she was a goddess from the Altean Pentatheon (which Keith had never heard of before but he went with it), but instead he got an outburst of laughter. 

 

“Altea?” said Blue between her giggles, “A myth? Are you sure you’re in your right mind, hotshot?” 

 

  Keith took offense. “My mind is perfectly right, thank you!” he snapped.

 

“Mhmm,” she muttered in response with a teasing smile, as if saying  _ ‘Yeah, sure, hotshot. Keep telling yourself that.’ _

 

“Who are you anyway? If you were able to get me out of my statuette, there must be  _ something  _ worthwhile about you.” 

 

  Again, Keith took offense. Apparently, since he wasn’t her ‘paladin’ or whatever she was going on about, she was allowed to insult him. So, he puffed out his chest and stood straighter, trying to look more self-assured. His various injuries probably made him look pathetic still.

 

“I am Keith-” he cut off mid-sentence.  _ Of the Shirogane Household _ . It was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He had no right left to that name. His bag felt heavier all of a sudden as if the emblem in it weighed it down. 

 

  Blue looked at him expectantly, but the rest of his sentence never came. She shrugged and came closer to him. When she was standing just inches from his face, he realized she was actually a bit taller than him. And she was barefooted. She was too close to his face and he found himself holding his breath.

 

“Well, Keith No-Last-Name, you’ve awoken me from my slumber. But you are not my paladin. And since it’s you who woke me up, you need to help me find them.” she stated with a smile (boy were those sharp canines), putting her hands on her hips. 

 

“W-what? No! I won’t! I don’t even know what a paladin is!” Keith sputtered. Blue pouted at him, her liquid gold eyes losing some of their cheeriness. 

 

“Besides,” he went on, stepping away from her, “I have more important things to do! I don’t have time to be helping  _ lion goddesses _ on a hunt for their  _ paladins _ or whatever!” 

 

“What could be so important to you?” she asked. He looked back at her; there was a determined fire in her weird feline eyes. 

 

“If you  _ must  _ know,” he started, half annoyed, half bitter, “I need to find my brother.” 

 

“Is he missing?” she asked, voice laced with genuine interest. Keith did a double take. 

 

“Wh- yes, yes he’s missing, and I have to find him. So I don’t have time for whatever treasure hunt you want to take me on,” he said, eyebrows furrowing as he turned away from her again.  _ Shiro’s waited too long already.  _

 

  He took a few steps back towards the water. Where was he going anyway? There was nowhere to go. He was trapped in a goddamn cave.

 

“Then I’ll help you!” he heard from behind him. He turned again to see Blue with a pleading look on her face. Looking closer, he realized that she looked desperate. He wasn’t completely sure what the big deal was about this paladin she insisted on finding, but apparently, it was big enough for even an alleged goddess to look desperate in front of a mortal. Keith felt a pang in his chest. He knew what it felt like to want, to  _ need  _ something so much that all pride was discarded. It was exactly how he’d felt all those months while he looked for Shiro. He, too, had come to the point of doing anything to get back someone important to him. He could at least relate to her on that. 

 

  Blue took advantage of his hesitation to answer and went on. 

 

“I will! I mean, how hard could it be?”

 

“I’ve been trying for a year. I doubt getting  _ your  _ help would make any difference.”

 

  Blue gave him a look that just screamed  _ ‘Well you certainly aren’t bright’,  _ unfazed by his snapping.

 

“Hate to state the obvious, hotshot, but there’s a significant difference between you and me,” she said all matter-of-factly and then leaned in as if to whisper a secret to him, “I’m a bit more godly than you.” 

 

  Keith was torn between defending his pride gracefully like he’d been taught as a kid and defending it the way he had been for months now; with violence. She was so smug about her nature, it drove him nuts.  _ He  _ was still having a hard time accepting the fact that she was a goddess, but really, how much room for doubt does the blue-lion-to-smug-warrior-beauty transformation leave you? Not much, he realized. And, admittedly, she had a point.

 

“I’m listening…” he grumbled begrudgingly, folding his arms over his chest- another bad idea, he concluded, as he was painfully reminded of his dislocated shoulder and quickly let his arms fall back on his side with a wince. Blue looked at him with concern for a moment before shrugging it off and continuing.

 

“Help me find my paladin. Help me with that, and in return, I will help you find your brother.”

 

 He considered. He had been searching for almost a year, but he had barely found solid clues, only whispers here and there, suspicions and supposed sightings that had little to no credibility. He could really use the help. And of a goddess, nonetheless. Alleged goddess, anyway. Still better than nothing. He sighed, caving in. He slumped a little before looking away from her, gazing longingly at the hole he’d fallen through earlier. How would they get out?

 

“Even if I agreed,” he began, and he saw Blue perk up from the corner of his eyes before gesturing around them, “It’s all theory unless we get out of here. And I don’t see any way out.”

 

  Blue smiled mischievously with a twinkle in her eyes, as if she knew something he didn’t. She came up in front of him again and outstretched her arm.

 

“All things in good time,” she said and before Keith could protest, she continued, “Now, do we have a deal?” 

 

  Keith stared at her hand for a second before taking a deep breath grabbing it in his own, giving it a firm shake. She smiled and gave a soft nod. 

 

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I posted this late at night yesterday and just couldn't stay up a minute longer to write the notes. Anyway, so this is what I've been working on for the past few months, and it's my fic for the Voltron General Big Bang. I was paired with some wonderful artists that did some amazing pieces for this which you can find on my tumblr, hagane-no-shiro, where I'll post the links and reblog the art (because I have no idea how to link here). You guys should also check out their other art because both M and Matt are so talented and make some sick art. 
> 
> This story is going to be updated once a week, but since my schedule is a bit irregular for now, I don't have a set day yet. But there are eleven more chapters to go, so eleven more weeks and I hope I'll settle on a day soon enough! Thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear what you think in the comments! They make my day :)


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